AMD to Delay Release of New Desktop APUs to October - Report

Advanced Micro Devices may delay release of its new accelerated processing unit code-named Trinity for desktops in a bid to adjust the design of the chip. Theoretically, the move will allow AMD to launch both Trinity APU and Vishera central processing unit at the same time. But will it make any good for the company?

Journalist Joseph Tsai of Digitimes web-site (citing anonymous sources) claims that AMD has run into "production and design issues with the Trinity processors" which caused the chip designer to "to make some adjustments to the processors' designs". Furthermore, there are, apparently, too many A-series "Llano" APUs in the channel, which would potentially slow-down adoption of A-series "Trinity" (that uses FM2 packaging) which is not compatible with FM1 mainboard designs for Llano.

The delay of the A-series APU trinity launch will without doubts underline the strategy of AMD's new chief executive officer, Rory Read, who believes it makes no sense to compete with Intel Corp. when it comes to performance. At the same time, it underlines AMD's inability to fight Intel in terms of both CPU performance and ability to supply high-end microprocessors in volume. Still, AMD can compete against Intel when it comes to feature-set and graphics-intensive performance of its Fusion APUs. Therefore, it is unclear why AMD intentionally skips back-to-school-season by a very advanced chip. Perhaps, the company does have problems with yields of Trinity, but given the current economic climate, this may not be the issue.

The AMD A-series "Trinity" APUs feature up to four x86 cores powered by enhanced Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture, AMD Radeon HD 7000-series graphics core with DirectX 11-class graphics support, DDR3 memory controller and other improvements, such as new dynamic acceleration Turbo Core technology, improved video playback engines and so on. The new chip is made using 32nm process technology at Globalfoundries, just like its predecessor code-named Llano, but thanks to architectural improvements it is projected to be 25% - 50% faster - depending on the task - than the first-gen A-series APU.